


principles of staff fighting (and other shenanigans)

by tunemyart



Category: Xena: Warrior Princess
Genre: F/F, baby!gay gabs!, early days!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-08
Updated: 2019-04-08
Packaged: 2020-01-05 12:12:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,689
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18365771
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tunemyart/pseuds/tunemyart
Summary: “Think of it as a new language you’re learning,” Xena told her, twirling her makeshift stave lazily between her hands. “It’s not going to come to you immediately. It takes work. A lot of it.”Sometime after Season One's Hooves and Harlots, Gabrielle's first forays into using her new staff.





	principles of staff fighting (and other shenanigans)

Two days out of Amazon territory, Xena nodded to her new staff and asked her if she was going to keep it.

 

“If you’re gonna keep it, you’re gonna learn how to use it,” Xena said. “Come on, on your feet. You were the one who said you wanted to learn how to fight. Changed your mind already?”

 

Of course Xena already knew the best ways to get her to respond usually involved provoking her, and Gabrielle knew her well enough at this point to spot the smile she was trying to hide as she, groaning theatrically, got determinedly to her feet. Her staff felt clumsier in her hands the closer Xena advanced, and Gabrielle had a sudden foreboding sense that this wasn’t going to go well for her. Even in the few months they’d travelled together, Gabrielle had learned that Xena was an excellent teacher - mostly because she also believed that failure was a better teacher still.

 

As predicted, it didn’t go well for her. Nor did it go well for her any of the other times Xena goaded her off the road or up away from dinner - from _dinner_ \- or awake and at it right after sunrise.

 

“Want to give up?” Xena asked cheerfully two weeks in, sounding very much like she already knew the answer, and also very much like she was delighted by it.

 

Most days, Gabrielle herself might have been delighted at the idea that she’d managed to prove something so fundamental to the core of who she was to Xena, and more, that Xena liked it. This was decidedly not such a day. Frustrated and cranky, bruised and sore, Gabrielle supposed this was what she got for travelling with the best warrior in Greece. “No,” she said stubbornly, and strengthened her stance.

 

“Think of it as a new language you’re learning,” Xena told her, twirling her makeshift stave lazily between her hands. “It’s not going to come to you immediately. It takes work. A lot of it.”

 

“I don’t remember learning Greek making me this sore,” Gabrielle grumbled.

 

“You were a few months old. I bet you cried a whole lot while you were learning and failing,” Xena said. Her grin had just an edge of schadenfreude about it, and Gabrielle wondered, not for the first time, if this was something she might have seen on Xena at sixteen or if it was the result of everything that had come after.

 

She rolled her eyes. “ _This_ isn’t me trying to make someone understand me,” she protested, but Xena shrugged.

 

“Isn’t it? Gabrielle, why do you think anyone fights in the first place?”

 

 _Because you like it,_ Gabrielle thought but didn’t say, clearly envisioning Xena’s grin every time she drew her sword, just before she effortlessly twisted her body through the air, poetry in motion. It was dangerous that Xena liked it, and Gabrielle knew that, but sometimes it was hard for Gabrielle to watch her and not to like it, too.

 

Regardless, Xena seemed to intuit her answer, because she tilted her head and raised a slightly disapproving eyebrow. Gabrielle blushed, but noticed that she didn’t deny it.

 

“Come on,” she muttered, gripping her staff. “Again.”

 

From her own vantage point, her progress was minimal. “Of course you can’t tell,” Xena told her that night while she grumblingly tended to the reopened blisters on her hands. “I can tell, though, and you’re getting better. Look, just because you can’t take _me_ out doesn’t mean anything. We’d both be in a lot of trouble if you could take me out.”

 

“Come on, Xena, I can’t take anyone out,” Gabrielle said, scoffing. “We both know that the next time we run into trouble, you’ll be sending me to run and hide in the trees or the bushes or whatever foliage is nearest and convenient.”

 

“Sure,” Xena agreed unapologetically, but Gabrielle could feel her watching her carefully. “I said you were getting better, though, and I meant it.”

 

It was something, but it didn’t do a lot to help Gabrielle feel like anything but what she was: a little village girl tagalong that Xena had come to tolerate.

 

She knew better than to voice her thoughts aloud. Xena was the best friend she’d ever had, and she knew that the reverse was also true. More importantly, she knew that though Xena didn’t voice her emotions often, it only meant that she held them all the more fervently close; and somehow, those had come to include her. Even now she was over there, trying to figure out what Gabrielle needed from her. 

 

“I’m gonna go for a quick dip in the stream,” Xena eventually said, still watching her closely. Gabrielle carefully kept her eyes averted. “You wanna come, or are you okay here?”

 

“I’m okay here.” It would give her a chance to get the wallowing in self-pity out of her system before Xena got back, at any rate. “You have fun though.”

 

As it turned out, Gabrielle actually managed to fall asleep in the middle of her wallowing, but it seemed to work: the next morning, she was back to her usual self, Xena was back to her usual self, the sun was shining, there was no mud on the road in sight, the air was cool but not too cool, and everything was as it should be. Xena didn’t push her into practicing with her staff that day, which was fine. Gabrielle assumed she was trying to help the both of them avoid the tension and frustration of the previous night. But neither did she the next day, or the day after that. The weight of the staff was familiar in Gabrielle’s hand now, but it was also faintly mocking the more and more she carried it around uselessly like a highly decorative, extremely sturdy walking stick.

 

“Uh, Xena?” she broached the topic that afternoon. “I’m sorry I complained so much about… well, you know. I haven’t been appreciating how much you’ve been trying to teach me.”

 

Xena only smiled, a little bittersweetly to Gabrielle’s eye. “You don’t need to apologize. I just realized something important - this needs to be your decision, and I wasn’t letting it be. Learning to fight, even with a weapon meant for self-defense… it’s not something to be taken lightly. You'd think I'd have learned that by now.”

 

“I’m not taking it lightly,” Gabrielle answered, catching her elbow and making her stop in the road, her eyes alighting bright and blue and open on Gabrielle's face. “Xena, all of this is my decision. Honestly, I think if I’m tagging along after you I’d better know how to defend myself. It’s not fair to make that your job.”

 

“I don’t mind it,” Xena said mildly.

 

A warm glow suffused Gabrielle’s heart at that. “Thanks, but I mean it. Will you teach me again? I promise I won’t complain anymore.”

 

"Well, you're sure get there faster if you don't," Xena agreed, chuckling, "but that doesn't mean I want you to stay quiet if you're injured, either."

 

To which Gabrielle made a  _who, me?_ face. Xena rolled her eyes and ruffled her hair in response. 

 

"Come on, Amazon Princess. We'll pick up again tomorrow, how's that?"

 

* * *

 

 The next morning, Gabrielle woke up to a fruit exploding in her face.

 

“What the - “ she said, jerking upright and trying to shake the bleariness.

 

“Gabrielle, we’re under attack!” Xena was shouting, which really helped with shaking the bleariness. Fully awake and shaking with nerves, Gabrielle picked up her staff while scanning the area for immediate threats.

 

She found one in the form of a cloaked and turbaned warrior coming straight for her.

 

“Xena!” she yelped, but she had no idea where Xena was - probably fending off her own attack, as her voice had come from the same place the warrior now _charging her with a pointy stick_ had come from. The least Gabrielle could do was take care of her own self.

 

Some of the panic wore off when she realized that her movements with her staff were coming instinctively. _Finally_. She was too exhilarated to be fully surprised as she realized later she should have been when she managed to disarm him, sweep his feet out from under him, and climb on top of him to do her best to keep him immobile.

 

“Take that!” she said, just as she started to panic internally with thoughts of _what now?_ She scanned the greater surroundings for signs of Xena returning triumphant, but Gabrielle couldn’t see any sign of her, couldn’t even hear any sounds of a fight. Surely Xena hadn’t --

 

Fortunately, she was distracted at that moment from descending further into her imminent panic spiral.

 

“Nice work,” said the warrior in a low - but oddly familiar - voice. Gabrielle sat back on the warrior’s hips and stared down suspiciously at the startling hue of his blue eyes and the odd and appealing fullness of his lips. She yanked off the turban a minute later to find that her suspicions were completely founded.

 

“Xena!” she yelled, and thumped her solidly on the chest.

 

Xena was already laughing, her long hair freed from its constraints and spilled around her head in a dark, shining fan. While that particular sound was coming more frequently the more Gabrielle got to see her with more and more layers peeled back, it was still rare enough that Gabrielle stopped to listen to it.

 

Or at least, that was part of the truth. The sight of Xena laid out beneath her like this - beautiful, carefree, _trusting_ - was already enough to have made Gabrielle stop breathing.

 

“You’ve got - “ Xena said, reaching up toward Gabrielle’s face, and blushing hotly, Gabrielle furiously wiped away the remains of the attack tomato.

 

“I can’t believe you,” Gabrielle grumbled, and clambered off of her onto trembling legs, shaky as any newborn calf she’d seen in all her years on a farm. _Just the adrenaline, Gabrielle, just the adrenaline._

 

Sure.

 

“Really, you can’t?” Xena asked, still grinning. “I’ll have to do this more often so that you do.”

 

Irritatingly, Gabrielle couldn’t bring herself to do anything but look forward to it.

**Author's Note:**

> more fic you might have originally seen some version of on tumblr :)


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